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Running Nutrition and hydration; could beer be better than water or a sports drink? The NY Times reports on beer and running.
Many runners are beer drinkers, yet, few of them ever considered the idea of a beer is a great sports drink. Perhaps, that is because beer has some alcohol, however, it is also full of carbohydrates necessary for running. According to this recent article in the NY Times, if you add a little salt, the beer’s benefits exceed those of water or sports drinks.
Believe it or not, there are running clubs dedicated to this idea of beer and running and why not; unconventional ideas often yield great finds. In this case, that great find is that beer is a great help when running a marathon, or at lease training for one.
Check out the article here
Runners Who Love Beer
By JEN A. MILLER n a dark corner of the 2nd Street Brew House in South Philadelphia, where the food menus are laminated and the chalkboard draft list lit by white Christmas lights, David April stood on a barstool and called for attention. After thanking the 70 or so runners for joining him that night, he lifted a full pint above his head and gave a hearty yell: “To the Professor!”Mr. April is a co-founder of the Fishtown Beer Runners, one in a long line of clubs that celebrate the joys of running and beer drinking. Others include the Hash House Harriers (started by British soldiers stationed in Malaysia in 1938, with many chapters now around the world) and the Beer Milers (four beers in four laps on the track — vomit and you’re penalized).The interest in running and beer isn’t just about dulling post-run pain or keeping the runner’s high going. That’s where “The Professor” comes in: Dr. Manuel J. Castillo, a professor of medical physiology at the University of Granada School of Medicine in Spain who has studied the effects of beer on athletic performance.
Dr. Castillo isn’t a runner, but a skier and a tennis player, who came to the topic after his brother challenged him about the wisdom of having a beer after a morning of strenuous skiing in 2006. When he couldn’t find any research to back him up, he did his own.
In his study, he had 16 physically active men run on a treadmill for an hour in a heated room, then either drink water or 660 milliliters of beer (about two cans) with a standard 4.5 percent alcohol content. The result: A moderate amount of beer after exercise didn’t adversely affect these young athletes’ recovery.
“We found that this amount of beer is as effective as water to recovery from exercise,” he said of the study, which he presented at the 2011 European Conference on Nutrition.
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